Learning about learning

Lessons from the Learner

You know what hard work learning is the day after a conference ends when you go from highly jazzed to completely fizzled out.

I've just finished six days of intentional learning. From the time my feet hit the floor till I collapsed on my pillow, I was engaged in discovery about learning. I'm pooped! Most of that time I was in Orlando at the Association for Talent Development International Conference and Exposition learning with and from 10,000 people who work building learning for others. I've been at this for twenty years when I made the move from teaching to training. I've seen the name of what we do evolve over the years. Now we call it talent development. Whatever you call it, it's about designing learning to solve business problems.

I learned a ton over the last few days. Here's a recap of the highlights.

Solving Business Problems

Training is often viewed as a cost center in business because we don't generate revenue. However, if we do our job the right way, we become a valued business partner, enabling employees to do their job better and learn new skills. Foundational to that is linking the goals of what we do to the problems businesses need to solve.

When Instructional Design Met Performance CONSULTING

Jim Robinson & Dick Handshaw Handout Link

In 1997 when I was working at Bank Boston, my manager had me read Performance Consulting, a few years after it was published. I thought it was interesting, but didn't do much with it. It wasn't until I got involved with MASS ISPI and attended a workshop by Tina Teodorescu that I really understood what this concept was all about. Since then, I've been doing a lot to connect the dots with the business need and teaching my students and staff to do likewise.

Key Takeaways

Focus more on the ﻿needs of the business﻿ as the foundation for learning

Performance Consulting is the process of uncovering business problems at the root of what is presented as a training need. It's about examining things systemically, to look for the causes of the problem, which may be related to coaching and feedback issues, process problems, or even a problematic environment. The key is that the business needs inform the performance needs the individuals must do. We uncover those needs through questioning. Dick Handshaw provides an excellent listing of questions on his website. Aligning our training to those uncovered needs ensures we solve the right problem that impacts business results.

Dick Hanshaw elaborated on the role of instructional design to create the learning solution for the problem. One concept that he has that I've not seen in other models is the blueprint, where everything is laid out prior to production. There is great wisdom in this.

Building Strategic Linkages: Map and Measure Your Learning Strategy

In this workshop we also talked about meeting business goals but by looking at things strategically. We looked at how business maps things out:

Then we looked at how this is measured, using a balanced scorecard approach:

My takeaway from this session was to look for the metrics being used to measure in the business and see how we might leverage them in training, and to focus on more alignment of learning goals with business goals.

Innovating Learning Through Design Thinking Interview Techniques

Design Thinking has become pretty trendy in business. It's a way to bring about innovation by leveraging the principles of design, which basically is iterative problem solving. There's a lot of research coming out of Stanford about Design Thinking and they even have a 90 Minute Crash Course you can take to learn it.

Depending on the model, you'll get pictures like these to depict design thinking. The one on the top is the model used at Stanford, and the one on the bottom is the model used at Booz Allen Hamilton presented in the workshop. The principles are similar in the world of instructional design, but with design thinking the ideate process is a bit more fluid and creative. I loved the idea of doing this with the subject matter experts that I work with to toss around ideas to generate a better end product. In this workshop and a similar one I attended during the week, we used mindmapping, post-it notes, and brainstorming techniques as part of the problem definition, and solution generating process. I definitely want to experiment more with this.

I came, I Learned, I presented.

I was able to share some of my expertise with people in my session on Ubiquitous Learning: Leveraging the Strengths of Online Learning. Having done all of the development work I did for the college over the past five years, I've seen some things that work well, and that really don't in online learning, and was able to show some examples of things that I've used with great success. Online learning is everywhere, and we miss out on a great opportunity not to leverage it. I had several international folks come up to me after the session to inquire if I'd fly to their company to present my workshop. We shall see where that goes. For now, we continue to learn. I spent several hours this evening going through the handouts for the sessions I was unable to attend. That's one of the benefits of online learning and access: I was able to extend the learning another day, and through mediums like this blog, share ideas with others to continue to learn. I love that. Don't you?